Chu puts Energy Dept. in spotlight

President Barack Obama has made a serious bet on clean energy with his budget. What that really means is that he’s banking on one man: Steven Chu.

Two major pillars of the Obama legacy have landed squarely in the lap of the energy secretary: the pursuit of clean power and nuclear nonproliferation. And with the Environmental Protection Agency under constant attack from Republicans and the climate bill a failure, the White House has seemingly turned its attention to the Department of Energy and Chu.

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POLITICO 44

“Secretary Chu is the shining light of this administration,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is ranking member of the subcommittee overseeing DOE’s budget. “He’s helped move the president; he’s helped move toward a clean-energy standard instead of one that picks and chooses winners and losers.”

Obama’s budget includes more than $8 billion for various clean-energy programs, including seed money for $36 billion in nuclear loan guarantees, $550 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program and support for additional energy innovation hubs, which would coordinate research efforts in three areas: rare earth materials, battery and energy storage, and new electric-grid technologies.

It also moves ahead with Obama’s State of the Union call for a “clean-energy standard” — a goal of supplying 80 percent of electric power from renewable sources — as well as nuclear, natural gas and “clean coal” — by 2035.

Chu will head to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to defend the budget proposal, which comes on top of billions of dollars from the 2009 economic stimulus bill that transformed the department.

“It’ll be an interesting time to have someone like Chu deliver that message,” said Floyd DesChamps, a longtime adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the Senate Commerce Committee who worked for DOE for eight years. “When he walks in, everyone knows him and knows what he’s capable of.”

After the agency’s creation and the end of the oil crisis of the 1970s, the DOE enjoyed a degree of anonymity maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal and pursuing basic research. Under President Ronald Reagan, DOE’s mission of commercializing technologies was narrowed to serving only long-term, high-risk research that the private sector couldn’t stomach.

But since 2009, with Chu’s arrival and the economic stimulus bill, the agency is being sold as a completely different animal: an engine for job creation that will bring alternative-energy technologies to market and wean the U.S. from imported oil. DOE, known for its thick bureaucracy and decades-long research projects, was suddenly pitched as an agency nimble enough to take on an economic recession in short order.

The stimulus bill poured nearly $37 billion into the agency — a sum greater than any previous DOE annual budget. DOE had to find projects that wouldn’t come back to haunt it and the president and do it fast.

In the weeks after the president’s State of the Union address, DOE has rolled out announcements about the success of its public-private partnerships and the stimulus projects it funds on an almost daily basis.

Readers' Comments (8)

DOE needs to be defunded. Our dependence on "imported oil" is caused by the draconian regulations and econazi lawyers that have deliberately crippled our domestic energy companies. Windmills, solar panels, electric cars, and corn ethanol haven't done squat, nor will they ever. Ongoing taxpayer bailouts, or stimulus, are simply a massive waste of MY MONEY. Oil, natural gas, and coal are the lifeblood of both democracy and free enterprise, and the marxists know that full well. Hiding in the "green" movement, the marxists, anarchists, and assorted eco-dupes attack our energy companies, led by Smiley the Sock Puppet at the white house and the EPA. They have litigated out of existence any new refineries or nuclear power plants as part of their all-out attacks.

It's time to runs these rats out of DC by defunding them, voting their supporters out in 2012, and crippling their ability to halt our domestic energy production. We don't need imported oil, thank you, and it's time to stand up and put America back in the forefront of energy independence.

Anyone that believes otherwise has been seriously undereducated or is a mindless follower of the "green" religion.

Chu is Cool. Put UN Ambassador/Former DOE Secretary Richardson back on the job too to push on Congress about the jobs and global recovery that come from a clean energy push. Bring Back Hazel O'Leary - my personal Nobel Peace Prize nominee for the zero-yield CTBT that stopped the arms race -- and her vision of solar panels in villages all around the world. Bring back Al Gore and Bill Clinton who invested in clean water technology for Africa. Bring back the Galvin Commision and support for technology for Sustainable Development.

Insulate to conserve on heat bills. Solarize to protect the grid from brownout. Flywheels to power the grid and distribute energy. Solar thermal electric for small businesses. Green Credit Card for buying electric cars and solar panels. Campaign for relection on a Harry Truman hydrogen-powered electric train. Hang solar panels on the Pyramids, Mr. President. Shine a new beacon of light into space itself.

The Department of Energy is and will always be an ineffective agency whose sole purpose is to distribute welfare to the middle class. There are no accomplishments under Dr. Chu to be discussed. Being a government bystander on the BP oil spill issue is not an accomplishment. The DOE budget needs to be cut back significantly.

"Those new programs are also a tool for the administration to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, given the ruckus over whether EPA has authority to do so under the Clean Air Act." Yet, on July 7th. 2010 Washington, D.C.-During a hearing today in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, EPA Administrator Jackson confirmed an EPA analysis showing that unilateral U.S. action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have no effect on climate.

"China has officially announced it will launch a program to develop a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor, taking a crucial step towards shifting to nuclear power as a primary energy source.

The project was unveiled at the annual Chinese Academy of Sciences conference in Shanghai last week, and reported in the Wen Hui Bao newspaper (Google English translation here).

If the reactor works as planned, China may fulfill a long-delayed dream of clean nuclear energy. The United States could conceivably become dependent on China for next-generation nuclear technology. At the least, the United States could fall dramatically behind in developing green energy."